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Comment by tetris11 | Hacker News Reader

"When work felt like home"

Gosh I haven't experienced that in a while. Working remote really does feel like a death sentence sometimes

It's because of all the added abstractions. 20-30 years ago you were closer to the metal, similarly to how you would play with arduino now. But now all you get is blackboxes which fogs the mind.

De-alienate yourself! Feel the tools again! Learn low-level concepts and use them in your work (data-driven design, functional programming, etc.).

Then it's like woodworking and cooking again.

No it's because we're social animals that are supposed to be around other people. Sick of covid granting so much legitimacy to the antisocial among us. I actually think everyone should be forced to 5 day RTO for their own good

Plenty of us who prefer working from home have a very rich social life. It's just not centered around being in the same building together with the people you happen to work with.

I get to spend more time at social activities I enjoy on days I work remotely because I don't have to waste my time on a commute.

> I actually think everyone should be forced to 5 day RTO for their own good

I think you should get a life outside of the office.

I already have a rich social life outside the office

People like to maximize time they see their families

That's funny. As a remote worker (on and off since around 2003, exclusively since 2009), I guess you'd consider me an antisocial, and yet you're the one who wants to force people to do something. I'm fine with people who like going to an office, I just prefer not to. I wouldn't want to force everyone to work from home though.

Do you have a good social circle outside of work?

Yes of course

Interesting. Well, I'm glad you enjoy working from an office, but just so you know, while I'm sure the set of antisocial people intersects with that of people who like remote work, they're not equivalent. In my (admittedly anecdotal, just like yours) experience, the intersection is not that big, and it exists with the people who like working from an office too.

I have a rich social life that I enjoy, and I also despise working from offices. Fortunately, nobody can force me to do that because I'm not an employee, but it would suck for me if someone had that power over me.

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to accept that people are different and enjoy (and dislike) different things.

> I'm fine with people who like going to an office, I just prefer not to. I wouldn't want to force everyone to work from home though.

Im not anti-social, but I'm an introvert with some very extrovert friends. I find interesting that we, introverts, "get" extroverts; I have no problem understanding people who like begin around other people all day long, I'm just not that guy.

But extroverts don't get introverts at all! A sentence like "yeah, I enjoy being alone by myself" feels like alien talk to them.

One might think so when alienated from the machine, but you can utilize the right temporal neocortex (mirror of your speech center on the left) which processes and emits emotions for whatever - it does not have to be other humans!

A race driver (dono anymore) called this "Mechanical Sympathy" and it's what happens when you work on what feels wrong / tedious etc when working on your computer. And that usually involves doing things down to the bits.

Can you look into your case on a memory bank and tell what chips hold what data? How it flows from the input of your fingers to the screen? A small C program using the framebuffer is within reach!

It's lovely!

Pirsig mentions this in his first book, and I always related to that part, as I'm the kind of person that "feels" the pain when someone turns a screw more than it can go, etc. Searching on the pilot you mention and the date of the book, I wouldn't be surprised if he picked up the term from Jackie Stewart indeed.

I like you! Pirsig yes, Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance - i got from Gemini it's Jackie Stewarts quote though.

Yeah, I see now my writing was confusing (it happens to me ...), as I meant to say Pirsig probably picked up the term from Stewarts.

In any case, great book. Gave it as a gift to my dad who was a mechanic when young and also rode a motorcycle (unlike Pirsig's' it as an Ariel though).

No, you’re wrong. I think everyone should be forced to remote work, and all offices should be closed forever.

…

See how it feels to have someone make absolute claims that tell you how to live your life?

> I actually think everyone should be forced to 5 day RTO for their own good

Fine. Let’s also break up companies that have offices in multiple cities and pick the maximum number of floors each company can occupy in a given office.

There isn’t anything more antisocial than going to a office where people wear headphones most of the times and don’t interact with each other because their project is spread across teams in multiple cities, often in different continents

That's true but it's nothing to do with local or remote work.

Claude, make a plan to refactor this repo to introduce low-level concepts like data-driven design, functional programming, etc.

Brilliant. You nailed it! It's not the effort you put into it ⸺ it's the (void) thought that counts!

Which borderline suicidal thought-pattern would you like to explore next?

I really like your super emdash

For reference, it's "Two-Em Dash" https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+2E3A

I went down the rabbit hole yesterday and found the THREE-em dash exists too https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+2E3B

I'd be more than happy to take your place on death row.

Work should never feel like home. If you feel that anywhere, that's a major red flag.

Same with coworkers calling everyone a "family" - nope, don't fall for that.

Working remotely was the greatest cure for this misaligned thinking.

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